3.Â Why is BSD not better known?

For a number of reasons, BSD is relatively unknown:

The BSD developers are often more interested in polishing their
code than marketing it.

Much of Linux's popularity is due to factors external to the
Linux projects, such as the press, and to companies formed to
provide Linux services. Until recently, the open source BSDs had no
such proponents.

BSD developers tend to be more experienced than Linux
developers, and have less interest in making the system easy to use.
Newcomers tend to feel more comfortable with Linux.

In 1992, AT&T sued
BSDI,
the vendor of BSD/386, alleging that the product contained
AT&T-copyrighted code. The case was settled out of court in
1994, but the spectre of the litigation continues to haunt people.
As recently as March 2000 an article published on the web claimed
that the court case had been “recently settled”.

One detail that the lawsuit did clarify is the naming: in the
1980s, BSD was known as “BSD UNIXÂ®”. With the
elimination of the last vestige of AT&T code from BSD, it
also lost the right to the name UNIXÂ®. Thus you will see
references in book titles to “the 4.3BSD UNIXÂ® operating
system” and “the 4.4BSD operating
system”.

There is a perception that the BSD projects are fragmented and
belligerent. The
Wall Street
Journal spoke of “balkanization” of the
BSD projects. Like the law suit, this perception bases mainly
on ancient history.